Bored with Jimothy Savile and Paedohunts and Modern England in General

Posted on 15 October, 2012 by | 2 Comments

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2 Responses to Bored with Jimothy Savile and Paedohunts and Modern England in General

  1. Mr Ecks | 16 October, 2012 at 5:18 pm |

    Suprised to find I quite liked the music. With the exception of the standards (1812/pachelbal/etc) any interest I had in classical music was killed off by bloody Semprini back in the 60′s. Every Sunday afternoon there would be Three Way family favourites which did requests and had pop songs. Then it was the comedy hour with 2 half-hour shows (The Navy Lark(we’re living in that one)/Al Read/The Clitheroe Kid/Round The Horne –Kenneth Horne didn’t live to see the moon landing if memory serves so you can tell how long ago this was–) and then it was bloody Semprini who refered to the contents of his show as “Something, Something , Loved ones, Neglected ones”-what he didn’t mention was that they were justly neglected. He must have scoured all of musical creation for the longest, most imterminable dull, dull, dull piano solos ever to exist. “Now That’s What I Call Solemn Music 105″ would be the disc of choice for your party before you would play the crap Semprini inflicted on his listeners.

  2. Dr Sean Gabb | 21 October, 2012 at 3:44 pm |

    I think we must be about the same age. I missed out on the Semprini, but I always enjoyed The Clitheroe Kid – not that I remember any of the episodes – and I still warm to repeats of Round the Horne.

    My introduction to The Classics came with Listen with Mother – Faure’s Berceuse. That was before I could speak properly. The next step came when I was about three. I was in my grandmother’s house, and she was tuned to either the Home or the Light Service. I listened to the opening bars of the Blue Danube Waltz, thinking I’d heard it somewhere else in a different form. With the slide to the main theme, I was hooked for life.

    I discovered Gilbert and Sullivan when I was fourteen, and was on Wagner a year later. Forget puberty – virtually all the excitement and joy of my teenage years had its origin in music. When listening to Mozart at the age of twenty (Mass in C Minor, K.427, Kyrie), I had what a person of lesser firmness of mind might call a religious experience. These have been recurring at odd moments ever since, and, with one exception for Schubert in 1994, are always connected with Mozart.

    For the past two years, I’ve been working my way through 19th century French grand opera. In the past few months, I’ve been rediscovering Beethoven – indeed, I listened to nothing in September but different performances of his 3rd Symphony. I find that overlistening to any one piece will dim its enjoyment for a while, but that its freshness always regenerates.

    I will have the Mozart Kyrie mentioned above at my funeral. If I have any control over the matter, I long ago decided that I’d drift out of life to the Den Alles Fleisch from the Brahms Requiem, or to Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music, or .

    My only regret is that my Symphony in D never got beyond the beginning of the first movement’s development section – and that my mastery of the flute is such that even my daughter now begs me to put the thing away.

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